Terminating SBT build build elegantly with simple error message - sbt

Question

I have an SBT build for a project that requires Java 8 and I have also included some Java 8 features (mainly java.time package elements) in the build itself. If I attempt to build the project on an earlier JVM (such as 1.7), I get a whole load of errors and exceptions when I run the sbt command.
So, I decided to add an initialize property to detect the JVM in use and terminate the build with an elegant message if the JVM in use wasn't at least version 8. Of course, this only works if I use it to build the builder (if I put it in ./build.sbt, then I still get errors if using JVM 1.7 or earlier because the java.time elements are not present). So I have a ./project/build.sbt file that contains the following:
initialize := {
val _ = initialize.value
if (!scala.util.Properties.isJavaAtLeast ("1.8")) {
sys.error ("My project requires Java 8 or later")
}
}
This works, but rather inelegantly. If I run sbt with Java 7, then I get the following output from the build:
java.lang.RuntimeException: My project requires Java 8 or later
at scala.sys.package$.error(package.scala:27)
at $ed9be51e9ab4a59b3b3b$$anonfun$$sbtdef$1.apply(C:\Users\me\Documents\src\myproject\project\build.sbt:55)
at $ed9be51e9ab4a59b3b3b$$anonfun$$sbtdef$1.apply(C:\Users\me\Documents\src\myproject\project\build.sbt:47)
at scala.Function1$$anonfun$compose$1.apply(Function1.scala:47)
at sbt.EvaluateSettings$MixedNode.evaluate0(INode.scala:177)
at sbt.EvaluateSettings$INode.evaluate(INode.scala:135)
at sbt.EvaluateSettings$$anonfun$sbt$EvaluateSettings$$submitEvaluate$1.apply$mcV$sp(INode.scala:67)
at sbt.EvaluateSettings.sbt$EvaluateSettings$$run0(INode.scala:76)
at sbt.EvaluateSettings$$anon$3.run(INode.scala:72)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:744)
[error] My project requires Java 8 or later
[error] Use 'last' for the full log.
Project loading failed: (r)etry, (q)uit, (l)ast, or (i)gnore?
If I place the same code in an empty ./build.sbt file, and run using Java 7 then I simply get:
[error] My project requires Java 8 or later
[error] Use 'last' for the full log.
Project loading failed: (r)etry, (q)uit, (l)ast, or (i)gnore?
That is, I don't get the exception message and stack trace.
Is there a way to make the build build exit more elegantly, so that I get output of the latter form rather than the former?